Sunday, October 4, 2015

Prayer Poem

Shekhinah,

Please send me a Nice Jewish man, who doesn't have to pretend to a stiff upper lip,Who can whine like I do when I have a cold, Who can--and will--spend the years it takes to grow up with me, While I grow beside him. Who can find the humor in my flaws just as I laugh while locating for him the Peanut butter in the fridge, literally in front of my nose.

And, Shekhinah, if only his mother were alive to be my mother-in-law, I would embrace her with love and laugh over any gimlet eye Turned in my house-cleaning. "Mother-in-law", I would beg her, "Teach me how you do it so well, For I will never be the balabusta you are." In truth, she would soon realize, I will never be a balabusta At all. And maybe hire me a cleaning lady.

Oh, Shekhinah, Help me above all not to buy into Anglo-Saxon Protestant cultural values that say that no oneShould drop by unannounced. Remind me, instead, of the richness of my own Immigrant culture that values closeness,And men with real feelings, exposed, And that has, for more time than our memories can hold, Created both men and women with wits and drive, Creativity and comedy, And the wisdom to love one another as we are.

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About Me

Some houses are haunted. Some haunt us. I am writing a house much like this one, (but not quite as fancy) located in West Adams, which is a mostly middle class African-American enclave somewhat West of USC, in the heart of L.A. We--white and Jewish, clinging to Middle Class by our fingernails--were fortunate to have found that particular house in that particular neighborhood at that time. The more I learned of the history of West Adams, which started as a wealthy white area, became wealthy black in about 1948, had a freeway rammed through Black-owned mansions, yet even after the crack epidemic, was still a strong and caring neighborhood, the more I cared for and respected our neighbors. Now we have moved. I still miss both house and neighborhood. The novel I am writing, "The Color of Safety," is both an homage to the neighborhood and an imagining of its first one hundred years through the inhabitants, black and white, Christian, atheist, Muslim and Jewish, of one wonderful house in what remains a wonderful part of an often unfriendly city.